A Brief Personal History Of Nancy Stark Smith's Underscore

I first studied with Nancy at the SNDO in Amsterdam in 1994. I was attracted by her reputation as one of the most experienced teachers of contact improvisation. I can't remember whether we worked with what came to be known as the Underscore in that workshop, but I think we at least touched on it.

My first deep immersion in the world of the Underscore was in Arlequi in 1996 - except it wasn't called that then. It was Nancy's score, known to those who studied with her as “the score". Asked to explain it to those who hadn't worked with Nancy, somehow it became "The Score" which maybe lead to a period when it seemed to take on something of a “cult” status – at least that’s how some people within the contact community who haven’t worked with it sometimes describe it.

Nancy compounded the problem by refusing to name it, insisting it should be "written in the sand", never written down except in the act of explaining it to others. In her insistence that it should be passed down as "oral history" rather than "written in stone", I believe that she succeeded in something very special; that everyone who has worked with it has their own individual understanding of it and special relationship to it.

This is how I remember Nancy explaining how the Underscore came to be born. In the early days of contact improvisation, she struggled with teaching the form. She talked of feeling lost in her teaching. It was early days and much of the material that we contact teachers take for granted had yet to be invented. Improvisation is hard to teach at the best of times, but here was a form whose focus on skin-to-skin full-body contact was (and still is) a cultural challenge and whose dynamic interdependence brings safety issues. Steve Paxton says his only interest in teaching contact is to insure personal safety.

What Nancy began to discern was a pattern in her teaching. Working consciously with this pattern supported her teaching and that pattern then evolved into her “score”, now known as the Underscore.

Somewhere along the line she started to dance her “score” as an improvisational score in itself. In her workshops, she offers not only the teaching of technical contact improvisation skills but also a number of scores in which to practice contact improvisation and related improvisational skills. The Underscore is special in that it creates a container for the whole group to practice ci together. For those who haven’t experienced it, you can think of it as a focused jam performed as both personal and group research into contact improvisation and its associated phenomena.

In the January workshop of 2000, I was a bit stunned (and a bit relieved) to hear Nancy describe contact improvisation as “a hippy martial art”. It was a product of its times and that is both a key to its beauty and maybe she suggested a major shortcoming. Those times were the late sixties and early seventies, and the counter-culture from which contact improvisation sprang was not so keen on rules. That said, many of those involved in its early development were studying Aikido which, while oriental, esoteric and exotic, is nonetheless highly structured and maybe benefits from this clear marking of boundaries.

She went on to paint a funny picture of contact improvisation taught and practiced within an Aikido-like structure: you go in and bow to a picture of Steve Paxton, you then bow to the teacher and the teacher bows to the students, before practicing you bow to your partner and they bow to you, and same again after you finish.

In some way, I see the underscore as Nancy’s attempt to create a clear structure for the practice of contact improvisation that holds true to the freedom of its birth.

So what is this Underscore?

There's no definitive answer to this question. All I have to say has to be prefaced by an all-encompassing, "for me ... "

The underscore creates frame of reference for the practice of contact improvisation. It delineates phases that can occur in the experience of a group, in the experience of an individual and some that apply to both. In this article I’ll later attempt to explain how I experience them in these terms.

This frame of reference is important in that not only can it be projected forward in time to plan classes or how to approach jam situations, but it can also be applied retrospectively in order to be able to reflect on experiences that arose in those situations.

Above all, it creates a language with which I can communicate with others about physical (somatic) experiences which often seem to occur outside the realm of language. For me it is above all else an awareness practice.

How do I make use of my experience of the Underscore?

In Nancy’s Workshops

This is the source of my understanding of the underscore. This is how I was introduced to it and formed my own relationship to it. Until recently, with the exception of Vellexon 2004 Reichenow 2006 Underscore group meetings and some rare teaching opportunities where I was able to work intensively with a group over an extended period of time, is where I was able to practice dancing the score with others also practicing it. Dancing the full underscore in such a focused environment has also given me some of my most satisfying contact improvisation dances.

Personal Practice At Jams

Practicing the underscore in jams, or at least, practising dancing ci with an awareness of the underscore as way to orient myself. What’s often missing, or in terms of the underscore incomplete, at jams is what I refer to in my analysis of the score as “Forming The Container” – especially some form of opening circle where I get to see and hear from everyone and some kind of closing circle. I notice for myself that after a circle and some pre-ambulation I find it much easier to open a line to everyone present in the space – in their absence, my ability to connect to everyone present and be available to them and for them to be available to me for dancing is patchy – it depends a lot on the exact circumstances of course but my point is that its less reliable.

Teaching

This is a funny one. I know I’m not the only one who regards the Underscore as an important support for teaching but I can’t recall actually discussing with anyone exactly how I/we use it, despite this being the route through which Nancy developed it.

Again for me it’s I find it supports my awareness of what’s going on. I don’t think I ever consciously structured a class around the score but its influence permeates my approach to teaching. Mostly I improvise my classes. I often have a clear idea of what to teach, sometimes an exercise or sometimes a word or phrase, but mostly I’ll improvise my way there with the group. In this way, the underscore gives me an idea of where we are in relationship to where I’d like to get to, and some ideas of how to get there.

Leading Score Jams

There’s a circle at the beginning where I explain some basics like the idea that we’re all in all the time, even if we’re watching or peeing, and that after a lead warm up. we’ll jam for a set time then, take time to reflect before coming together in a circle to share and then end our practice.

I then lead a warm up that goes linearly through the score up to grazing/first engagement), After that I shut up and let the “jam” take its course. About 15 minutes before our agreed ending time, I call the time and suggest we take our time to find an ending together. When we have found a group ending I suggest 10 minutes reflection/warm down alone. Then we meet in a circle to share our impressions and questions before closing our practice.

I’ve received favourable feedback from people participating in these “score jams” – whether they know about the score or not they often report a deeper more focused and satisfying experience. The only drawback for me is that, when I lead them, having to be responsible for holding the frame, time-wise at the very least, means that there’s always a part of me that is not quite free to sink into my own somatic experience.